Spooky Ghost Meringues
Recipe

I'm squeaking this meringue recipe in under the gun, hoping that it's not too late for at least a few of you to try for Halloween. Going along with the spirit of the season, I piped meringue into tiny ghost shapes. Looking through my oven's window, the baking sheet looks like it is housing a tiny ghost army. If you aren't into ghosts and ghouls - no problem, the great thing about this recipe/technique is that you can shape the meringue into any form you can dream up. If you don't get around to trying it now, check back later in the year, and use the same approach to create edible trees or candy cane shapes.

If you've never attempted to make meringues, you should. I know that beating egg whites and using a pastry bag all in the span of one recipe might seem a bit too fussy for some of you, but I'll play devil's advocate and say that on the flip side we are only talking about a tiny ingredient list. In my mind, a bit of fuss on the production end of things offsets the ingredient scavenger hunt that can go along with more elaborate baking recipes. For this meringue recipe all you need is egg whites, salt, cream of tarter, and powdered sugar. And a couple silver sprinkles (or dabs of chocolate or seeds) for the eyes. But the real payoff is in the process. There are few things more satisfying to me in the culinary realm than watching a couple sudsy looking egg-whites turn into elegantly structured, glossy, bright-white meringue.

Feel free to double the recipe if you like, though two egg white make a nice amount of meringue. Have fun!

Get everything ready ahead of time. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat mat. I also like to set up my pastry bag in a tall empty glass to make it easier to fill. Have a spatula on hand.

Place the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar in a large, clean mixing bowl. Start whisking the egg whites at medium speed in a large bowl with an electric mixer or Kitchen-Aid. This stage is all about watching and letting the egg whites tell you what to do next and you have to be nice to them to get them to transform - so avoid turning your mixer on and off. When the whites are frothy and have a bit of volume to them, start sprinkling in the sugar a bit at a time over a minute or two - leaving the mixer on the entire time.

Keep mixing, it usually takes me 15 -20 minutes to get the volume I'm after here, but all sorts of variables can effect this time - weather, temperature of the whites, etc. The whites will become glossy and their appearance will resemble marshmallow cream, keep going. At this point you need much more volume out of the whites, try to imagine making a dozen 2-inch cookies out of the mixture. Whisk, whisk, whisk. You will start to see the volume really start to increase, the whisk will be leaving more definitive trail in the meringue. At this point I usually gradually slow down the whisk, and see if I can lift it out of the meringue leaving a stiff structured peak. Imagine, you are going to pipe this out onto the cookie sheets, so you need it to have lots of structure, if you don't go far enough your ghosts (or shapes) will just collapse into a puddle.

Working gently (but quickly) fill the pastry bay -or alternately, a large plastic freezer bag with the corner snipped off - using the spatula. Try to avoid lots of air pockets in the pastry bag, they make piping much more difficult. Close the bag by rolling the top down a few times.

Now pipe about 12 ghost shapes onto the prepared baking sheets. I found that making tiny circles all the way up was the easiest way to make the shape I was after. Press the candy silver balls one at a time into your pointer finger and place them on the ghost - again, quickly but carefully.

Place the meringue in the oven for an hour. After an hour, open the oven door an inch or two and cook for another 30 minutes. I usually touch one of them at this point, they shouldn't be gummy or wobbly. If they are still too moist, leave them in the oven until they aren't. Turn off the oven, and leave the meringues in there until it comes down to room temperature.

At this point you can eat the ghosts, but I like to dip them in a bit of chocolate and then shredded coconut (see top photo).

If you are storing them, do so in an air-tight container.
Make about 12 meringues.

Heidi, these are very cute, but you could also try making Mexican sugar skulls, they are in my book The Mexican Mama's Kitchen! I want to get your book and maybe I could send you mine. Would you like to exchange books? Problem is... I am in London. Great Blog. Sofia Larrinua-Craxton
www.fiestasofia.co.uk http://fiestasofia.blogs.com

We just carved our jack-o-lantern and I'm making your butter and black tea pumpkin seeds again tonight. I can rarely remember specific recipes a year later, but those are really addictive, and thus memorable. They aren't for the easily distracted, though: I do find that when toasting in butter one has to watch the seeds carefully so they don't burn. But they're worth the effort of attention.

I love how dipping their bases in chocolate makes them sort of look like they're floating just off the surface of whatever you set them on! It's amazing that you didn't brown these at all like baking. I can't wait to try these!

Those are WAY too cute! Alas, I tried to find dragees or at least dragee substitute at Sur la Table in the Ferry Bldg a few weeks ago and I was subjected to a very long lecture about why they are illegal. grrr.

OK, those are the CUUUUTEST little ghosts ever. Seriously. If I wasn't in the middle of moving, I'd be making some tonight. But they're going on the Christmas baking list... as little snowmen of course!

Very nice recipe, I would try it but I don't have pastry bag and mixer. But I'm saving link for next year. Thank you for sharing and Happy Halloween!
Margot

October 31, 2007

Mazie

Mini chocolate chips work in place of the dragees.

October 31, 2007

Ginger

How cute!
After loving your website for a long time, I finally got your cookbooks from Amazon this week. They totally surpassed my (high) expectations! They are beautiful and the writing is so clear and pleasant. I really love the style of Cook 1.0 - all the variations. You are awesome!!

These are adorable and so easy! Thank you, I'm going to have my kids help me make a batch of these tonight since they're too old to go trick-or-treating but too young to go to most parties either. You've saved the night, Heidi, thanks!

Those are too darn cute! You are one creative lady. I wonder how I could make those raw??? Oh, I'm inspired. I enjoy your sight Heidi.

October 31, 2007

Christy

What do you do if your meringues refuse to cook? I'm not sure if it's the humidity in Missouri, but I have made meringues before and cooked the wretched things for hours, and they have refused to go beyond the gummy stage, until suddenly they're nasty and brown and overly crispy. I used to live in Montana and never had that problem.

I love meringues, and was actually planning on making them this week before I even saw your post! It looks great, I just have one question: does the cream of tartar speed up the cooking process? Usually I thought you cooked meringues for 2 hours, at least, if you were cooking at 200 degrees. But I'd never used cream of tartar before. 30 minutes sounds a lot better!

Reminds me of a comic book I read as a child (3 Ghosts?, Friendly Ghosts? Casper?) Mon mari loves merangues - and I've never made them. I missed Halloween but I think I'll try them for Christmas...snowmen, er, I mean Snow People!

I LOVE them - so cute and yet so delectable. Now if only my oven weren't on the fritz I could have my own wee ghost army on my counter top!

November 1, 2007

charlotte s

absolutely adorable!!!!

November 1, 2007

Mrs Redboots

Oh, those are charming! But sadly, my oven won't make meringues - I've tried and tried and they just go gooey. My mother (who makes them nearly every month, very successfully) says you can't make them in a gas oven. Sigh!

Hi Heidi, I just read the Millet bake recipe (your previous entry), but the comment space was not there,hence the comment here. Bake with millet...wow! Thats inspiring. Enjoyed reading the post...whitman's book looks really good...will check it out. Enjoying reading your book at the present. Always a pleasure.

These ghouls are great, I've just found your site, and fell in love with it!!
Thank you for some great inspiration.
My only problem now is finding the time to go through all of your past entries!!
Thanks again!

I was going to add for those that observe Dia de los Muertos, you can shape these into skulls for a quick Calacas treat [as Sofia indicated above, doing sugar skulls]. The possibilities to attach them to a sugary base stops at your imagination really.

November 2, 2007

Larissa

Can we use regular field pumpkins (Jack-O-Lanterns) to cook/eat? Do they taste good? Or do I need to use other types of pumpkins?

Thanks

November 2, 2007

Rickie Beth

I made these this morning for a belated Halloween celebration and they're perfect in every way! I'm awful with a pastry bag but even I managed to make adorable little ghosties, although I admit that I had to smooth down the little points on top of each one that almost made my cookies look more like KKK members than delightful treats -- whoops. I dipped some of the cookies in dark chocolate and the rest in orange-tinted white chocolate for some extra festivity. Thanks for the great recipe and ideas!

November 2, 2007

Diny

Does anyone know if meringue would work with splenda? I'm dying to make these, but want to be able to eat them also!

Such a great picture and idea! I made them for a friend but the problem I had was that they didn't stay so beautifully white but went a kind of salmon colour ;-( would you have any suggestions how I could prevent that?

November 4, 2007

Kelly

Oooh, these are so tasty-looking and cute! Do you think snowmen could be made in the same way? (Is the meringue stiff enough to hold the snowman shape?)

I'm going to try to pick off a couple of these questions before I shut down the comments on this post.

Eva, not sure what is happening there, maybe your oven racks are too high up in the oven and they are talking on color that way - or your oven temp could be off altogether? I'll leave the comments open a bit longer in case anyone else has thoughts on this.

Kelly & co, yes, you could just as easily do snowmen (with pretzel arms??!) could be cute. Maybe I could host a meringue snowman contest on Flickr or something ;) for all the people who want to make them for the holidays.

Heidi, you mention making trees and candy canes with this same recipe. Does that mean food coloring can be added? I have no experience with meringues, but like everyone else has said, these are so temptingly cute...

to the gas-oven lady: yep, you can do meringues in gas ovens, just make sure the temperature is low enough and you keep them closer to the bottom. also be sure to rotate 'em so some of them don't get brown on one side. good luck!

oh, and i forgot: i think you can add food coloring in the beginning stages, just mix it into the unbeaten egg whites. i would definitely use as little as possible, though, and if you can get yourself to a supply store go with the gel paste (or perhaps even the powder? heidi, have you tried that?) instead of the supermarket-watery junk. the gel pastes are concentrated and come in an enormous array of colors. if anyone tries it let me know how it goes!

heidi, gorgeous pictures and lovely site, thanks.

November 9, 2007

Amber

Thats so cutie. I;m giong to try to make them myself, but there is no way i can do that. That sounds really good.

November 9, 2007

uraqtmel

I didn't get to use this for Halloween, but I thought of a cool alternative to this recipe for those of us who still want to try it before next Halloween. You could possibly add some green food coloring to the recipe and make Christmas trees. Then, sprinkle some confectioner's sugar over it to look like snow.